Who shapes the carven word, the lean, true line, And builds with syllable and chiselled phrase, To rear a sheltering temple and a shrine To house a dream through brief and meagre days Must know that time wears words away like stone And blurs the sharpness of the clean, straight thought; A ghost will wander out and leave alone And tenantless the temple that he wrought. This will be ruins for another day, Of lichen-bitten stone and empty tower, A tumbled shrine whose god has moved away . . . Yet later-comers, in some moon-hushed hour, May find a strange light haunting still the shade, And footprints that no mortal feet had made. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE SONG OF THE INGENUES by PAUL VERLAINE WEIGHING THE BABY by ETHEL LYNN BEERS MEMORIAL DAY by WILLIAM E. BROOKS ODE ON MELANCHOLY by JOHN KEATS AUF WIEDERSEHEN! SUMMER by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL |